Nationwide drivers ready to make Iowa Speedway debut
NASCAR Nationwide Series drivers will make their Iowa Speedway debut in Saturday's U.S. Cellular 250. // Iowa Speedway, Courtesy
NASCAR Nationwide Series teams head to Iowa Speedway for the first time this weekend, and they’ll face a laundry list of concerns.
How does the track handle? What groove do drivers run? What approach in the turns should drivers use? What kind of setup do teams need? How many adjustments do crew chiefs need to make in the race?
Iowa is a unique track, a 7/8ths-mile facility that was designed by Rusty Wallace. Iowa is shaped a little like Richmond International Raceway, which has a D-shaped front straightaway. Iowa’s turns are progressively banked, from 12 to 14 degrees.
To help teams prepare for the U.S. Cellular 250 on Saturday, NASCAR is opening the track a day early Thursday for a full day of practice.
Joe Gibbs Racing’s Dave Rogers, crew chief for the No. 20 Toyota to be driven by Brad Coleman, plans to bring many extra suspension pieces to try out Thursday.
“We have to take full advantage of that test day,” Rogers said.
Rogers said his team’s base setup comes from computer simulations of tracks similar to Iowa, like Richmond or Nashville Superspeedway. He said he’ll take a “wild, educated guess” on an initial setup, but is prepared to make multiple changes.
“You look back at what you did at those tracks, and you bring those suspension pieces to the race track,” Rogers said of similar tracks. “I’m sure you’ll see us changing spindles, upper [A-frames] and definitely the normal [pieces], the swaybars, the springs, shock packages. We’ll be busy that test day, for sure.”
JGR won’t be the only busy team, of course. Since NASCAR has banned virtually all on-track testing, to get six hours on a relatively new track that is on the Nationwide schedule is a bonus.
“Any time you’ve got six hours, it’s going to be a test session for the whole field,” Rusty Wallace Racing driver Steve Wallace said. “And the way it is now, you can’t test. So it’s going to be cool to be able to test a full day – and a good track that’s worth testing at.”
Iowa Speedway, built four years ago, should provide a lot of side-by-side racing, drivers say.
“It’s a funny race track because it’s not Richmond, which is a three-quarter mile and we tend to take it as a short track, and it’s not a mile-and-a-half because it’s only seven-eighths mile,” Nationwide points leader Kyle Busch said. “It drives like Richmond, but it feels like a mile-and-a-half. It feels like you’re going so fast there but you’re really not.”
Busch is one of the few drivers to have raced – and won – at Iowa, as he won the NASCAR Camping World Series East-West combination race there earlier this year.
“It’s a great race track,” Busch said. “It was really good for side-by-side racing. Turn 3 is just a little bit harder than to be expected. It’s a little flat getting in there, and then the banking picks up more as you get into the corner and onto the exits. That might be a little tricky for some guys to get used to, especially racing side-by-side on the inside of somebody – a couple guys might get loose and hopefully not cause a handful of wrecks.
“To learn that place was really good and really beneficial for me, I feel like. It was nice to go there and hopefully we can have a good, solid run there. I know Carl [Edwards] will be fast because that’s sort of his type race track like Richmond. We’ll have a good battle.”
Other drivers expect to be in the mix, too, of course. Racing at a new track should level the playing field somewhat, especially for Nationwide-only drivers who have raced at Iowa before.
At least that’s the theory, said Germain Racing’s Michael Annett, a Des Moines, Iowa native who has raced at Iowa Speedway as often as anyone.
“Everyone always says that when we go to a Nashville or a Kentucky, some of us regular Nationwide guys are going to have a better chance,” Annett said. “There are six or eight guys who have that idea in their head every week, and the races get even tougher.
“Iowa is going to be even worse because none of these teams have been there, so we all have it in the back of our minds that we have some laps in here, finally.”
